Curating the Moving Image (2011) | The P&P Blog

The Stage on the Screen: Intermedialities in the Silent Era

One of the first published considerations of intermediality between theatre and film appeared in 1966, in the journal The Tulane Drama Review. Contemporary scholarship has taken an increasing interest in the subject since then, but works that could be said to fit this paradigm have been appearing since the birth of cinema.

In her article appearing in the journal, “Film and Theatre,” Susan Sontag confronted attitudes towards art works that hybridized these two forms. As she writes, “the history of cinema is often treated as the history of its emancipation from theatrical models,” noting that this contributed towards “purist” definitions of cinema that strove to eliminate associations with the theatre.

This program aims to demonstrate that cinematic-theatrical hybrid works and symbiotic influences between the two forms have always been present. In our era, we see everything from moving pictures projected in live stage productions to live stage productions broadcast into movie theatres, and artists such as video and performance artists experimenting with everything in between.

The Stage on the Screen investigates the overlapping of film and theatre in the period before the proliferation of synchronized sound. In this era, the cinema was gradually superseding the theatre, in particular vaudeville, as the dominant popular entertainment form. However, the traces of vaudeville were everywhere in the cinema of the period, as many of its star actors and creators began their careers onstage before moving into film.

In these films, we often see these artists playing with the conventions of their original artistic home, often beginning by setting their films in theatrical contexts. But the paradigms of how the two forms meet in each varies from film to film. Examples from the program include the first film to ever be commissioned for inclusion in a live vaudeville program, an early animator who presented his work onstage and interacted with his moving drawings, and short films of famous vaudeville acts.

This program demonstrates that not only have artists always been playing with the boundaries of these art forms, but also that the results are not merely experimentations or failed “impure” works that were forgotten on the way to the eventual manifestation of the narrative classical cinema. These films are each fascinating in their own right, possessing individual and original articulations of form.

1. L’Homme Orchestre (1900)

Georges Méliès, 2 min.

This film is typical of Méliès in its set-up, a very theatrical presentation in which the camera frames a stage-like space and he performs to the audience as though in a theatre. The set is also very two-dimensional and looks as though it was made for a theatrical play. However, the filmmaker, who had also performed live onstage as a magician, takes advantage of the possibilities of cinema to create tricks that would be impossible in a live theatre production. Through the use of multiple exposures, he is able to produce several images of himself that appear simultaneously onscreen.

2. Trapeze Disrobing Act (1901)

Thomas Edison, 2 min.

This short exemplifies the meaning of the term “cinema of attractions,” featuring a burlesque performer onstage who performs a combination striptease/trapeze act. The camera remains still for the duration of the film, which takes place in one take. In the frame we see the performer, hanging from her trapeze in an upper corner of a stage set, and two audience members in a box to the side. Like many films concerning theatrical productions, this short is concerned with the audience as well as the performance- and how the  two connect, crossing the line between the two spaces. As in the Méliès short described above, the theatrical set-dressing gives the film a particular look through its obvious artificiality and two-dimensionality.

3. Paris to Monte-Carlo in Two Hours (1905)

Georges Méliès, 10 min.

The first known case of a film being made specifically for inclusion in a stage act. The film was commissioned by the Folies-Bergères and was shown within a performance of variety acts. The stage and screen spaces and the temporality were contrasted and connected by the presence of some of the same actors in both the film and the live performance. Méliès himself had performed magic live on the same stage in the past; here he created a passage between the worlds of stage and screen for the performers. Greg Giesekam notes in his book Staging the Screen: The Use of Film and Video in Theatre that the film’s premise, the notion that the trip from Paris to Monte-Carlo could be achieved in such a short time, was a way of playing with space within the film- another example of Méliès using the medium of film to perform magic tricks that he could not achieve on the stage.

4. Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)

Winsor McCay, 10 min.

One of the first animated films, this was the first to present a fully-formed cartoon character. McCay toured with his animated film and would appear onstage with the screen, talking to “Gertie” and giving her instructions which she would then appear to follow. At the end, he would announce that Gertie was now going to give him a ride. He would then disappear by walking behind the screen, at the same moment that an animated version of himself entered the frame onscreen. The film that remains today also contains a narrative surrounding the creation and first presentation of the animation, and McCay’s instructions to Gertie appear as intertitles. As in some of the live-action films in the program, the “magical” passage of the performer between stage and screen is central to this animated film.

5. A Night in the Show (1915)

Charlie Chaplin, 30 min.

Chaplin came from a stage family and was performing on the British Music Hall circuit from a young age, later going to the United States and working in Vaudeville before starting to make films. This film, based on a stage act of Chaplin’s, features the slapstick that is typical of his work. He plays two audience members who cause havoc at a vaudeville show, Mr Pest and Mr Rowdy. Most of the action takes place in the audience, with the drunken Mr Pest sometimes climbing on the stage and interacting with the very poor acts being presented. While in the stage version, Chaplin would have played the drunk planted in the audience, at screenings of this film the audience would have been separated from the action. However, the film medium allows him to cross other boundaries; including pouring a drink from the balcony as one character onto the other version of himself seated below.

6. The Playhouse (1921)

Buster Keaton, 20 min.

Like Chaplin, Buster Keaton’s parents were performers, and he was onstage early in his life. In this film set in a theatre, he is multiplied many times through trick photography. He plays the performers, the musicians, and the audience. This is very similar to the gimmick in Méliès’ L’Homme Orchestre, in which the earlier filmmaker also appears as multiple versions of himself. Both filmmakers use this narcissistic joke in which they play all the parts to bring the “magic” of cinema to their former métier, making tricks that make the theatre itself magical. Keaton’s fantasy turns out to be a dream in this film, which he wakes up from in the second half.

7. Sherlock Jr. (1924)

Buster Keaton, 45 min.

This film sees Keaton, a projectionist at a cinema, fall asleep and dream that he enters the world of the movie he is showing. He achieves this by simply running up to the screen and jumping into it, as though onto a stage set. The rest of the film concerns his adventures within the film-within-the-film, but this moment is remarkable for the way that it confuses stage and screen space. As in The Playhouse, the muddling of theatrical and cinematic worlds is explained by the fact that Keaton’s character is dreaming.

8. La Revue des Revues (1927)

Joe Francis, 103 min.

This beautifully coloured feature film is in fact a compilation of Parisian Vaudeville (Variété) acts, including two shorts that feature Josephine Baker. They are strung together with a plot concerning a young performer starting out in the business, but the story is really an excuse to showcase the stage acts. They are similar to the Vitaphone films in that they are shot from a still position, mostly from a distance that frames the stage. They also operate almost as documentation, as the uni-directional, unmoving camera work suggests the point of view of an audience member. Here, however, the stage is much larger, and the acts are more spectacular than showcases for talent. Though the segments are obstensibly dance numbers, the choreography is minimally challenging, and the execution by the chorus girl performers is less than brilliant. However, the film has a captivating look, the grandiose sets and the carefully coloured film creating a very special and unique aesthetic.

9. Hello Bluebird (1927)

Vitaphone, 2 min 30 sec.

This is one of many Vitaphone short subjects featuring Vaudeville acts, which were produced in New York between 1926 and 1929. The shorts featured popular Vaudeville stars performing their stage acts; these films would then actually be shown themselves, in between live acts, at Vaudeville shows. This film features Blossom Seeley and Benny Fields, a couple who were well-known for their stage performances; this film would have enabled audiences to see them all over the country. The camera is stationary and the scene is presented very simply- almost as a document of what the stage performance would have been like. We are even presented with a curtain at the start that opens to reveal the scene. The shorts were shot directly on a stage, as this photograph from a shoot at the Manhattan Opera demonstrates. The films are an oddity in this program because they had live sound- it was recorded onto 12- and 16- inch shellac soundtrack discs, however, and had to be played back separately from the film on the projector, making them an example of the in-between area between silent and synchronized-sound films. The film reels and their soundtracks have in many cases become separated from each other over the years- though there is a project to seek them out and reunite them (see Resources below).

Resources

The Vitaphone Project- http://www.picking.com/vitaphone.html

Cherchi Usai, Paolo. Silent Cinema: An Introduction. London: British Film Institute, 2000.

Giesekam, Greg. Staging the Screen: The Use of Film and Video in Theatre. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007.

Sontag, Susan. “Film and Theatre.” The Tulane Drama Review. 11.1 (1966). 24-37.